Well before FIRST releases the new game challenge in January, The Green Machine sets itself a list of tasks that must be done. Topping the list: Teaching our own team’s rookies as many skills as possible, while also reaching out across Minnesota to FIRST teams to prepare them as well for the never-enough-time task of robot-building that is the build season. Since September, 1816 members have learned electrical wiring, mechanical engineering, robot programming, animation, and CAD. At the same time, mentors put many hundreds of miles on their cars to help us reach teams in Northern Minnesota and as far south as Mankato, presenting seminars on team fundraising and sustainability, programming, and what to bring to competitions.
At each of these seminar Saturdays, we talked about non-robot things, such as how to reach out to potential sponsors, as well as how to program a FRC robot. Topping off our outreach efforts to teams, more than 550 team members and mentors came to the 2012 Minnesota SPLASH at the University of Minnesota! The number of email questions coming into our “contact-at” web-form are rapidly ticking upward, another sign that the 2013 build/competition season is approaching. Whether it’s mentoring in person or mentoring via email, text and video chat, it really was a busy fall for The Green Machine’s members (and mentors).
In our workshop, the robot-build subteam has focused on proper use of tools, regular and power, as well as the basic framework of brainstorming a design, solving problems, and building a robot. Researching and building a swerve drive drivetrain has been a major project and we hope we can use these new skills in 2013. Programming has been working with the Kinect, as well as teaching rookies how to code properly. Their big test, each rookie has to write new code for our older robots. Wiring and programming the mecanum drive robot is also on their list. CAD not only taught new members how to use Solidworks, but stepped up the use of 3D printing to make actual robot parts. Facilities spent much of the pre-season working on designs for an even better pit. We even held a mock brainstorming event ahead of the winter break. Using a game from year’s past, we followed the same procedures as if we were brainstorming immediately following Kickoff. We’ll find out soon enough whether our preparations have been enough for the 2013 FIRST Robotics Challenge.